Paper detail

Critical Behaviour of the Number of Minima of a Random Landscape at the Glass Transition Point and the Tracy-Widom distribution

We exploit a relation between the mean number $N_{m}$ of minima of random Gaussian surfaces and extreme eigenvalues of random matrices to understand the critical behaviour of $N_{m}$ in the simplest glass-like transition occuring in a toy model of a single particle in $N$-dimensional random environment, with $N\gg 1$. Varying the control parameter $μ$ through the critical value $μ_c$ we analyse in detail how $N_{m}(μ)$ drops from being exponentially large in the glassy phase to $N_{m}(μ)\sim 1$ on the other side of the transition. We also extract a subleading behaviour of $N_{m}(μ)$ in both glassy and simple phases. The width $δμ/μ_c$ of the critical region is found to scale as $N^{-1/3}$ and inside that region $N_{m}(μ)$ converges to a limiting shape expressed in terms of the Tracy-Widom distribution.